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A week on Saturday two very important soccer games will be played in Europe. The Champions League Final will be played in Lisbon between Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid with the winner picking up the most prestigious trophy in club football.

The other will be at Wembley Stadium where Derby County will face Queens Park Rangers with the winner taking a place in next season’s Premier League.

Not surprisingly the Champions League will garner the greatest attention but if financial reward is the benchmark the play-off game comes out on top.

Last week the Premier League announced the distribution of prize money for the twenty teams that competed in the Premier League last season. The lowest pay out went to Cardiff City and it still amounted to over $100M dollars.

Although the play-off winner will face substantially increased costs in the Premier League the “guarantee” of a nine figure pay out is the gold at the end of the rainbow for Derby or QPR.

The pay out for 2014 was the first under a new TV deal. The distribution jumped substantially based on BT entering the domestic market and a dramatic increase in rights-fees coming from overseas.

The table shows the pay out for this past season, the three previous seasons under the old contracts and 09/10 which captures the contracts before that.

TEAM

13/14

12/13

11/12

10/11

09/10

TOTAL

Manchester Utd.

$149.9

$102.1

$101.3

$101.5

$89.0

$543.8

Manchester City

$162.3

$97.6

$101.8

$93.2

$83.3

$538.3

Chelsea

$158.1

$92.4

$91.4

$96.9

$88.7

$527.5

Arsenal

$156.1

$95.9

$94.4

$94.4

$86.9

$527.7

Liverpool

$163.8

$92.1

$91.2

$92.7

$80.6

$520.5

Tottenham

$150.7

$93.9

$96.4

$89.2

$83.2

$513.4

Everton

$142.8

$87.0

$82.2

$83.3

$72.1

$467.4

Aston Villa

$122.1

$75.6

$70.7

$82.3

$77.1

$427.9

Stoke

$127.2

$74.9

$73.2

$73.2

$65.5

$414.1

Sunderland

$120.6

$72.9

$74.6

$78.0

$62.8

$408.9

Fulham

$106.3

$76.1

$79.5

$79.6

$64.2

$405.7

Newcastle

$130.0

$75.9

$91.1

$79.5

$376.5

West Brom

$110.5

$81.1

$78.3

$75.8

$345.7

West Ham

$123.8

$82.0

$67.7

$58.3

$331.8

Swansea

$124.5

$80.0

$77.1

$281.6

Wigan

$68.5

$72.1

$69.6

$58.8

$269.0

Norwich

$108.4

$77.4

$76.6

$262.4

Blackburn

$67.7

$70.7

$69.4

$207.8

Southampton

$129.2

$73.6

$202.8

Bolton

$68.2

$72.1

$61.5

$201.8

Wolves

$65.5

$68.2

$60.1

$193.9

Hull

$112.6

$54.8

$167.3

QPR

$66.9

$72.6

$139.4

Birmingham

$66.9

$69.0

$135.9

Crystal Palace

$123.0

$123.0

Cardiff

$104.3

$104.3

Reading

$67.2

$67.2

Blackpool

$65.7

$65.7

Burnley

$57.0

$57.0

Portsmouth

$53.4

$53.4

In addition to showing the vast amounts of money that the clubs have received the table also shows how precarious a Premier League is for so many clubs. With Fulham now relegated it means that since the 2009/10 season only half of the 20-team league have maintained a presence.

Although the relegated clubs Fulham, Cardiff and Norwich will each receive parachute payments the amount falls well short of the riches that accrue to a Premier League side. Parachute payments are spread over four seasons and each club will receive around $100M if they have not rebounded to the top flight at the end of that period.

Each relegated club perceives demotion as a temporary affliction and believes that normal service will be resumed after a one season hiatus. The reality is something quite different. According to statistics collected by the Daily Telegraph only a quarter of relegated teams will bounce back the next season. Two seasons after demotion there is around a 40% chance that a relegated club has re-established itself in the top flight.

And the longer it takes the more the chance of relegation to an even lower division begins to match the chance of promotion back to the Premier League. So despite the “we will be back” bluster the chances are not that great.

The other impact of a relegation battle is on managers. Of the ten teams that finished in the bottom half of the Premier League this past season, seven clubs had a least one managerial change.

With the increasing financial and marketing gap between the Premier League and the Championship is it a reality that is not likely to change any time soon.